Replacement for 2TB HDD Hitachi HDS722020ALA330

Dear all,

I recently upgraded my a. m. iMac with an SSD by replacing the SuperDrive. This exercise went very smoothly thanks to the excellent iFixit description (MANY thanks for that). I setup the new SSD (Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series 256GB) with my a. m. internal 2TB HDD from Hitachi as FusionDrive. Also this worked very smoothly and my iMac really feels almost like a new iMac again. However, I also realized that the Hitachi HDD remains a speed bottleneck and noise producer as before for any data not stored on the SSD. So I'd like to spend my iMac a newer, faster and if possible more silent HDD from a proven manufacturer but I always read I should only replace with the original manufacturer due to the famous thermal sensor issue. Problem is that Hitachi is now called HGST Storage and had been apparently acquired by WD. HGST only shows one remaining desktop HDD on their website, Deskstar 7K1000.C with just 500GB and 1TB and the opinions about that drive seem to be everything but positive. So my question - does anybody now a compatible HDD fulfilling my a. m. performance desires and without the need to turn my iMac to the sound level of a starting airplane due to continously running fans?

1 Answer

When you added in the SSD did you do clean up the dust buildup on the logic board & fans? You may need to deal with that as well as the heat transfer fins for the CPU/GPU heat sink first.

Well the good news here is you can swap-out your HD with a different venders (Seagate or Western Digital) the issue is you will need to get the correct power/thermal cable harness for the drive for your system.

So first decide on which drive you want and then locate the correct harness for it (I would get the cable first then order the drive).

thx so much for your swift reply and advice. Actually I'm quite new here so please accept my apologies when I reconfirm my understanding. Actually my logic board and fans looked very clean so I didn's see the need for an "extra" cleaning but anyway many thanks for your advice. I will check more carefully when opening next time. Reg. the power/thermal cable harness: again many thax for that advice. I didn't know there are alternative cables available for other HDD vendors. Where can I find those cables suitable for my iMac type? I searched in the iFixit store but couldn't find. In terms of reported reliability I currently tend in direction WD replacement drive. Cheers, Andreas